Blizzard: Activision has “unfair reputation”, has never influenced WoW design

In a recent Q&A session, Word of Warcraft game director Tom Chilton has taken a stand as a staunch defender of little ol’ Activision.

Chilton was determined to get across that the studio works independently from Activision and that the publisher does not influence the design of their MMO.

“I’ll come out and say it,” said Chilton, “Activision gets an unfair reputation among our players for this, as does Bobby Kotick. We do demos for the Activision executive team about twice per year (sometimes only once). They ask intelligent questions about why we’re doing what we’re doing, but at no point have any mandates (or even “suggestions”) about the game’s design been issued.”